MySQL Cookbook

Using Apache to Run Web Scripts

Problem

You want to run Perl, PHP, or Python programs in a web environment.

Solution

Execute them using the Apache server.

Discussion

This section describes how to configure Apache for running Perl, PHP, and Python scripts, and illustrates how to write web-based scripts in each language.

There are typically several directories under the Apache root directory, which I’ll assume here to be /usr/local/apache. These directories include:

bin

Contains httpd—that is, Apache itself—and other Apache-related executable programs

conf

For configuration files, notably httpd.conf, the primary file used by Apache

htdocs

The root of the document tree

logs

For log files

To configure Apache for script execution, edit the httpd.conf file in the conf directory. Typically, executable scripts are identified either by location or by filename suffix. A location can be either language-neutral or language-specific.

Apache configurations often have a cgi-bin directory under the server root directory where you can install scripts that should run as external programs. It’s configured using a ScriptAlias directive:

ScriptAlias /cgi-bin/ /usr/local/apache/cgi-bin/

The second argument is the actual location of the script directory in your filesystem, and the first is the pathname in URLs that corresponds to that directory. Thus, the directive just shown associates scripts located in /usr/local/apache/cgi-bin with URLs that have cgi-bin following the hostname. For example, if you install the ...